The practical applications of all this

The practical application of I and B.

I am going to focus on a few issues that I and B bring-up and how the Zapatistas are caught up with them.

According to I and B, the following is to be done:

1) "...critical engagements may help inform efforts to creatively imagine the future not as a simple unfolding of the logic of the present, but as a process of rediscovery and reimagination...re-imagining the future requires entering much more perilous terrains in the contact zone."(217)

2) Engaging this broader interest rest on the oppressed self (219)

I think the Zapatistas are approaching this....

I am going to start this by asserting a caveat; I don't think that the Zapatistas are exactly the answer that I and B are gesturing at. I would assume that they are aware of the existence of the Zapatistas and had they thought that the Zaps had the answers to the problems that they outline, they would have titled their epilogue something like "look toward the Zaps," but I do think that the Zaps come close to an approach that I and B outline.

Zapatistas

In 1994, after the passage of the NAFTA agreement, the Zapatista Army, the EZLN, staged an uprising in the south of Mexico. They declared war on both the Mexican Army and the emerging neoliberal world order. The Zapatistas conceptualize this neoliberal order as an extension of the "indainizing" ideology that Naeem and David sketch.

After some military engagement, the Zapatistas put down their arms and sought justice through dialogue. In this away the "opressed" Mayan Indians of Mexico brought themselves into the consciousness of, at least a sliver, of the newspaper reading, intelligentsia in the global north. They have sought to maintain this dialogue through, marches, the internet, the passage of legislation and other modes of communication with the global north.

The stated goal of the EZLN is to create "a world in which many worlds fit"

How do they seek to do this? the answer is taken from their 1996 declaration, which was prepared at the end of an international conference staged in Chiapas Mexico.

This intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences and acknowledging similarities, will search to find itself with other resistance’s around the world. This intercontinental network of resistance will be the medium in which distinct resistance’s may support one another. This intercontinental network of resistance is not an organizing structure; it doesn’t have a central head or decision maker; it has no
central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist."[21]

In other words, the Zapatistas seek to work together with the worlds struggling to create a world safe for differing identities. For an international relations of acceptance, instead of negation. They do not seek power, mearly space. This is why the New York Times has referred to them as the first post-modern revolution.

I can hear everyone thinking, well that’s great, but how are they doing.

Well, I don't know how to measure that. The Zapatistas have given their mission no definite time line. From the report backs of colleges I have heard that the material lives and self confidence of the individuals with in the communities has improved, but as to solving the problem of difference and International Relations, they obviously still have much more to go.

Right On!

"NOT so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men, and one thousand five hundred million natives. The former had the Word; the others had the use of it."

Its been nearly fifty years since Sarte wrote these words in the preface to Fanz Fanon's the Wretched of the Earth, it seems with that with International Relations and the Problem of Difference, IR is begining to catch-up.

This might sound a little rediculous, but I accually think that this is probably the most practically aplicable work that we have read all semmester. This is becouse it grapples with issues that we will all have to deal with in the feild.

I will alberate on this more in my next blogg...

Waltzer: Consensus is Not a Fact Based Exercise

It seems that every blog posted so far, Jesse, Bobby, Christine, Marguax, has touched upon Walzer's choice not to use argument. I think the blogs have well covered the positive aspects of his style, he is able to write in an accessible way, he sets a high bar for standards of war, he uses informal logic, he is able to appeal to a gut feeling ect...

For this reason, becouse the postive aspects are well covered, I would like to focus on the short comings of Walzer's choice not to use traditional logical argument. I think it is great to challenge, well, everything. However, as a long time activist, I know that simply abounding tradition doesn't always lead to optimal alternatives.

Instead of relying on argument, Walzer backs-up his assertions by painting pictures using popularly concensused upon American images.

I see two problems with this:

Culturally Specific.

1) Walzer uses images from the American liberal consciousness to back his assertions. By relying on images, Walzer limits his audience to those who assign the same understandings to those images. Walzer's argument is culturally specific to American liberals.

For example, it seems unlikely that Palestinians would accept Walzer's assertion that fighting forces can act with moral restraint backed by the image that Walzer paints of the restrained, morally careful Stern Gang and Israeli Defense Force.

Limited to this Paradigm

The scope of the American Liberal's understanding of the world is limited. It operates within a Paradigm. Although I would love to define all the limitations of this Paradigm, I don't have space to outline and back-up my arguments here. It would probably take a book to just define a few common assumptions shared by American Liberals and to justify this with argument. But, generally, to the American Liberal, war is justified sometimes, killing of civilians by state actors, including during war, is frowned upon, violence by non-state actors is almost always unjust, and Israel didn't do anything wrong until maybe 1987 and even that is stretching the paradigm.

Anyway, since Walzer is limited to the images that exist within, and reinforce, this paradigm, he can't make an assertion that is outside of the paradigm. Walzer can not argue that all war is unjust using images from a paradigm that defines WWII as the Just War. Nor can he argue that post-colonial violence plays a positive, cathartic role for the psyche of the colonized within a paradigm that is generally adverse to the killing of civilians. I'm not arguing that he should, or even that he may want to, I'm just pointing out the limitations of his method.

To put is another way, Walzer's vocabulary is constructed by images, and there are certain ideas that this vocabulary either does not have an image to express or can not be said because they contradict the assumptions that lie behind already established images.

I believe that it is for this reason that Walzer must simply dismiss those who have not already bought into the assumptions behind the pictures that he uses to build his argument.

Waltzer: Just and Unjust Wars and Israeli Exceptionalism

Earlier today, I was sitting, waiting to talk to my graduate advisor, when a college of mine became excited to see me there, on the bench, tearing through my edition of Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars. He told me that he had just finished the book and was preparing a paper comparing Walzer's "Just War Theory" put forth in the book, to his current stance on Israeli's recent military operation into Lebanon and Gaza.

My college felt that Walzer’s support for Israel’s most recent invasion of Gaza and Lebanon contradicted his guidelines for “Just War.”

That sparked my interest, "hhhmmm," I said. "I wonder if there are traces of his defense of Israel's current action in the text."

I re-visited the reading and noticed that Israel plays a unique role in Walzer's book.

Israeli and “Just and Unjust War”

Walzer mentions a handful of examples when Israel has (in order that the examples appear in the index):

grappled with a moral dilemmas about civilian causalities and made tough, but fair descion (304), been a state with good reason for pre-emptive attack (81-85), properly cautioned its troops not to take undue action against its civilians (310n), justly, invaded other states to provoke the return of its citizens (104n). He also depicts a member of the Zionist terrorist militia, the Stern Gang, as killers with a good moral filter as to whom they kill (199).

Even if one believed that, in the cases that Walzer mentioned, Israel was behaving justly, there are plenty of incidences that seem to be unjust by Walzers standards that he could have mentioned: the Deir Yassin massacre, the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, the Goland Hieights, and the Sinai Peninsula to name a few.

Contrast this with his treatment of the United States and Brittan.

Walzer references examples when the United States has (in order that the examples appear in the index):

been driven by animal instincts (60), fought organized wars(143), Burned farms, tried to starve the confederacy, (171), Massacred civilians at Mai La(315), defined freedom and intervention in a self serving way(94-95), fought war for its own purposes in someone else’s country (Vietnam) (97-101), fought counter insurgency wars in Cuba and Vietnam in a non-humane manner(188-196) ect… pages 290, 292, 299-303, 309-315, 322, 102-104, 117-122, and 319-322.

Walzer references examples where Brittan has:

Come to the aid of another country, out of its own self interest (71) Engaged in unnecessary preemptive war(79-80) held an empire based on moral hypocrisy (91-95) brought war to Neutral Norway (242-250) (255-262) ect…

It is clear that Walzer gives Isreal a clear advantage.

Hedly Bull: The Anarchical Society

I would like to echo the comments of Christine and made that Bull's book is problematic becouse it ignores issues of justice.

I agree with this and also would have liked to see his justice book get published. I question how different a "justice book" by Bull would read, given that Bull states that "he does in fact hold that order is desirable, or valuable in human affairs, and a fortiori in world politics"(93)

Hedley Bull

OK, a few questions:

1) What is the analytical advantage to ignoring the notions of justice?

2) Is his analysis a-historical, does it claim to be trans-historical?

3) What is the analytical weakness of focusing on Europe? Does this cause short comings similar to Duetch's?

4) Is he forced to face the same problem that Kant did, negation or society of states?

Duetch and Negation

A common theme of this blog has been IR scholars and the question of, conversion or negation.

This question is alive and well in Duetch's book. Though Duetch speaks about the option of "pluralism" I think a close reading of his book "Political Community and the North Atlantic Area" reveals that, like Kant, Duetch--and his empirical method--is unable to imagine a world with out war without first conversion or negation. Like all blog posts, this would be better as a 20 page well fleshed out essay. However, I will try to briefly outline my arguments below.

Duetch finds that peace can be achieved though integration of two kinds, amalgamated and pluralistic.

Duetch provides two essential pre-conditions for both.

1) Compatibility of Major Values
2) Mutual responsiveness.

This presents the policy maker with the same problem that the student of Kant is presented with, if a compatibility of major values and mural responsiveness are necessary for peace, then what is the peace minded policy maker to do with those whose values do not comply and those who will not respond in solidarity?